Eris Drew

The self-proclaimed High Priestess of the Motherbeat, Eris Drew is a spiritually minded DJ, producer, and transgender advocate from Chicago. Understanding the communal and ritualistic powers of the rave experience, her club sets are ecstatic events, and her uplifting selections connect the dots between techno, garage, trance, and electro, embellished with nature recordings and additional sounds. She co-founded the T4T LUV NRG label with her partner Octo Octa, and the duo released a Fabric Presents mix in 2020. Drew’s own productions, as heard on EPs like 2020′s Fluids of Emotion and the 2021 full-length Quivering in Time, are breakbeat-heavy house tracks filled with turntable scratches and euphoric synth melodies.
Born in Perth, Australia, Drew moved to the United States as a child, eventually settling outside of Chicago. She started playing synthesizers as a preteen, and began going to raves during the early 1990s. She had a spiritual awakening following a rave in 1994, and began to DJ and produce dance music as a form of healing and self-expression. She became a regular DJ at Chicago’s Smartbar, where she eventually established a party called Hugo Ball with fellow residents Justin Long and Sevron in 2012. In 2015, she began co-hosting Daphne (named after British musique concrète pioneer Daphne Oram), an annual festival and workshop series dedicated to women, female-identifying, and nonbinary electronic musicians and DJs.
Drew met fellow house DJ and producer Octo Octa (Maya Bouldry-Morrison) in 2017, and the two instantly felt a deep connection. They soon became romantic and musical partners, and their split EP Devotion was released by the Lisbon-based Naïve label in 2018. The duo formed the T4T LUV NRG label, and Drew released the mixtape Raving Disco Breaks, Vol. 1 in 2019. Drew’s solo EP Fluids of Emotion was issued by Detroit-based label Interdimensional Transmissions in 2020. Drew and Bouldry-Morrison became BBC Radio 1 resident DJs later in the year. Recorded in their remote cabin in New Hampshire, the duo’s first commercially released mix, Fabric Presents Octo Octa & Eris Drew, appeared in November. A year later, Drew released the breakbeat house full-length Quivering in Time. ~ Paul Simpson